William Carleton, (born Feb. 20, 1794, Prillisk, County Tyrone, Ire.—died Jan. 30, 1869, Dublin) prolific writer who realistically portrayed the life of the rural Irish.

Born the youngest of 14 children on a small farm, Carleton learned to appreciate the Irish heritage from his father, a man well-versed in the rich folklore of the area. At first a village tutor, he published a two-volume collection of sketches, Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry (1830), which describes the Ireland of the 19th-century tenant farmer. The writings that followed—e.g., Tales of Ireland (1834), Fardorougha the Miser (1839), and The Black Prophet (1847)—deal with such rural problems as the land question, secret patriotic societies, and famine. The Black Prophet, a powerful, almost Gothic novel, was published at the height of the Irish Potato Famine of 1845–49. Although filled with local colour, his powerful stories had wide appeal and were translated into French, German, and Italian.

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...Bawn (1855), in which the central plot of The Collegians is inverted: a young Catholic gentleman falls in love and elopes with an Anglo-Irish woman. Its author, William Carleton, though born among the Irish-speaking Catholic peasantry of County Tyrone, first attracted notice while writing for the strongly anti-Catholic magazine The...

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(1794-1869). A prolific writer, William Carleton realistically portrayed Irish peasant life. His writings dealt with such rural issues as land ownership, secret patriotic societies, and the Irish potato famine of the 1840s.